‘Doomsday Today in Aleppo’: Assad and Russian Forces Bombard City

The body of a child is pulled from the rubble in al-Marja.Credit
Ameer Alhalbi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Syria’s war escalated abruptly on Friday as government forces and their Russian allies launched ferocious aerial assaults on opposition-held areas of Aleppo amid threats of a big ground offensive, while efforts at the United Nations to revive a cease-fire appeared to collapse.

Repeated airstrikes that obliterated buildings and engulfed neighborhoods in flames killed about 100 people in Aleppo, the divided northern Syrian city that has epitomized the horrors of the war, turning the brief cease-fire of last week and hopes for humanitarian relief into faint memories. The bombings knocked out running water to an estimated two million people, the United Nations said.

“It is the worst day that we’ve had for a very long time,” said James Le Mesurier, the head of Mayday Rescue, which trains Syrian rescue workers. “They are calling it Dresden-esque.”

A video shot by a witness showed buildings burning after an airstrike on the Mwasalat neighborhood in the eastern part of the city.

The bombings shook the ground, left residents cowering in their homes and made streets impassable, according to anti-government activists in Aleppo. “You don’t know if you might stay alive or not,” said Modar Shekho, a nurse at al-Dakkak hospital in an opposition-held part of the city.

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‘All of the World Has Failed’ Aleppo

Civilians in Aleppo try to cope after the Syrian government and Russian forces launched a new offensive on opposition-held areas on Friday.

By YARA BISHARA on Publish Date September 23, 2016.
Photo by Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters.
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The assault left residents buried in debris, including a child in the al-Marja neighborhood of the city.

The bombardment targeted rebel-held districts in eastern Aleppo and opposition communities in the surrounding countryside. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the government and tracks the conflict from Britain, said 72 people had been killed in all of Aleppo Province, including 24 women and children. But most of the dead were in the city itself.

Rescue workers shared numerous videos of men digging children out of piles of debris and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble.

Hanaa Singer, the representative for Unicef in Syria, said in a statement that attacks had damaged the pumping station that provides water to eastern Aleppo, where 250,000 residents are surrounded by government troops. In retaliation, she said, a pumping station in the city’s eastern side was shut off, stopping water from flowing to 1.5 million residents in the city’s western side.

The population would have to rely on well water, which is often contaminated and would raise the risk of outbreaks of disease, she sad.

Ammar al-Salmo, head of the Aleppo branch of Syria Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue organization, said that three of his group’s centers had been bombed and that some of their rescue vehicles had been knocked out.

“It is as if Russia and the regime used the truce only to maintain their weapons and plan on next targets,” Mr. Salmo said from Aleppo. “It is like doomsday today in Aleppo.”

Photo

People inspect a crater filled with water in rebel-held Tariq al-Bab.Credit
Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters

The Syrian government announced the new offensive in its state-controlled news media, quoting an unidentified Syrian military official who described the Aleppo operation as “comprehensive” and said it could continue for some time. The official said the operation would “include a ground offensive.”

That appeared unlikely, as many analysts have said that the Syrian military does not have the manpower to seize and hold significant territory. Its air force, however, has been able to pummel rebel-held areas with relative impunity.

As airstrikes intensified, any hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough between Russia and the United States, which support opposite sides in the conflict, disintegrated in New York, on the sidelines of the annual conclave of the United Nations General Assembly.

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Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, met briefly but there was no indication that a short-lived cessation of hostilities that ended early this week could be revived anytime soon.

Speaking at his own news conference, Mr. Lavrov said the United States had failed to ensure that moderate Syrian rebels separated themselves from extremist militants of the Qaeda-allied Nusra Front.

That separation is one of the conditions in the cessation-of-hostilities agreement Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov announced on Sept. 9.

Until that happens, Mr. Lavrov said, any other measures would be “senseless.”

Jean-Marc Ayrault, the foreign minister of France and a member of the International Syria Support Group, the 17-nation effort led by Russia and the United States, said earlier on Friday that he feared that the diplomatic paralysis reflected a growing weariness with the daily brutalities in Syria.

“Will we be inured to this?” he asked. “Let’s not let Aleppo become the 21st-century Guernica.”

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and industrial center before the civil war began in 2011, has been divided for years between government and rebel forces.

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Before the partial cease-fire declared last week, rebels often shelled civilian neighborhoods in western Aleppo, and the government of Bashar al-Assad regularly bombed rebel-held eastern Aleppo, cutting civilians off from much-needed aid.

A preliminary analysis of new satellite imagery from as recently as this month shows more damage, said Lars Bromley, a research adviser at Unosat, a branch of the United Nations that has analyzed satellite data since the conflict began. The more recent destruction has occurred on the northwest outskirts of the city and in industrial areas in the northeast.

Despite the violence, most of the city’s front lines have remained stable, with both sides lacking the manpower necessary to seize and hold significant new territory.

Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon; Maher Samaan from Paris; Karam Shoumali from Istanbul; Michael R. Gordon and Rick Gladstone from New York; and Somini Sengupta from the United Nations.

A version of this article appears in print on September 24, 2016, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Aleppo Reeling as Air Assaults Are Stepped Up. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe